Writing and editing

I love to write and hate to edit. If you look at what I published regarding Chapters 1 through 11 of "Memories" that I wrote I spent somewhere between 100 and 1000 hours editing and finally gave up. I thought about having someone else edit my work and realized it would be sort of like letting someone snip bits of one of your baby's fingers off little by little in each edit.

I finally came to the conclusion that I just had to pretty much leave it as it was because it still had "Heart" which is what I want in something I read. You can take the best writing and technically destroy it pretty easily. You can write the best song and digitally mess with it too much and it has no heart at all. Whatever you write has to "MOVE" you. If it doesn't "MOVE YOU" and open your mind and make you ask questions and maybe change the way you view your reality "What Good is it?"

This is the point here folks. So, what I'm saying here is often the really best stuff you ever write should "NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER" be edited maybe at all or you lose everything in the edit.

OF course, without editing it maybe only 10 people might fully understand what you have written or possibly even just ONE (YOU) the author too.

So, where is the perfect place to start or stop editing? I cannot answer this question. IF I could I might be the best editor in the world.


And by the way: "I like my babies to have all of their fingers please!" (in regard to writing and calling your writings 'your babies'.)

But, if you are writing for a living often writers who write for a living have to sell their souls or prostitute themselves to make a buck to stay alive.

So, the purest writing comes from the soul when you don't have to make money with it.

That's why often people's best stuff comes before they even finish high school or get into college. It's because they are loving to write and aren't getting paid for it so they can write what they really really want to write.

So, basically what I'm saying here is that if you love to write and love what you write: Editing Sucks!

Because it might take 10 minutes to write something fantastic that is really great.

And then you try and edit it and screw it completely up during the next 1/2 hour to hour.

This is why you need many different versions of your writings (ESPECIALLY THE FIRST ONE!)

So NEVER NEVER NEVER throw away your first draft because that often is the best thing you ever wrote or will ever write.